Tag: Joshua Sharfstein

Md. awards $16 billion, 10-year contract for health insurance

Top state officials on Wednesday approved spending $16 billion over the next 10 years on health insurance for over 200,000 state employees, retirees and their dependents. One of the largest contracts ever granted, the three-member Board of Public Works approved it at a meeting dominated by discussion of the positives and negatives of health care delivery in Maryland, including serious patient care problems at a state hospital in Hagerstown.

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Analysis: Health Exchange Mess Part I: Failures in leadership

In a two-part series Thursday and Friday, retired auditor Charles Hayward (full bio below) delves into the problems that led to a disastrous launch of the Maryland Health Benefit Exchange in fall 2013. Among the chief failings of state leadership: not addressing serious red flags when there may have been enough time to fix the root causes; not appreciating the monumental tasks assigned to limited resources; and (3) not selecting one IT expert to take leadership on the website’s development.

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Rascovar column: Stonewalling Md. Health Exchange probe

The Maryland General Assembly concludes its 2014 session Monday in good shape – except for one monumental omission: the mystery surrounding Maryland’s fatally flawed health exchange, which has squandered uncounted tens of millions of dollars.

It’s now clear that both Gov. Martin O’Malley and Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown are content to stonewall and impede any detailed investigation of what went wrong in setting up the Maryland Health Benefit Exchange until well after the June 24 primary election.

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Whistle blower at disabilities agency fired by O’Malley-Brown administration, she alleges

For two years, MarylandReporter.com has been covering the financial problems with the Developmental Disabilities Administration. The following story by Mark Newgent was published Wednesday evening on Watchdog Wire-Maryland. Rather than just linking to it, we are publishing it in its entirety as it uses court documents to describe corruption and fraud at DDA as alleged by a whistle blower later fired.

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Disabilities agency now ‘in the red’ after underspending for years.

Maryland Health Secretary Joshua Sharfstein told a town hall meeting in Columbia Tuesday night that the troubled Developmental Disabilities Administration has made significant progress since discovering $34 million in unspent funds last year.
“It looks like we’re in the red” by $4 million or $5 million for the fiscal year that ended June 30, “which is a good thing for this agency,” Sharfstein said, “but we don’t know yet.”

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$390 million rise in state employee health insurance raises concerns about costs and quality

Maryland’s Board of Public Works voted Wednesday to increase spending authority on health care benefits for state employees by nearly $390 million. Budget Secretary Eloise Foster said the increase would pay for more people joining the state’s plan since the original health care authorization in 2008. Comptroller Peter Franchot raised concerns about the quality of care the added costs would pay for.

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